🍪 Maamoul cookies
Maamoul are small shortbread-like pastries made from semolina and butter, filled with date paste or chopped pistachios and scented with rose water. They are pressed into carved wooden moulds, which give each one its decorative pattern, then baked until pale golden. The dough is crumbly and melts in the mouth, while the filling is sweet and fragrant.
Diets
Allergens
Contains (in a typical recipe):
What it is made of
Recipe
Ingredients
- 500 g coarse semolina
- 100 g fine semolina
- 250 g butter, melted
- 3 tbsp rose water
- 2 tbsp sugar
- Pinch of salt
- 350 g pitted dates, mashed into a paste
- 150 g pistachios, chopped and mixed with 2 tbsp sugar
Method
- Rub the melted butter into both semolinas until every grain is coated, cover and rest for at least 2 hours or overnight.
- Add the rose water, sugar and salt and knead briefly into a soft dough.
- Roll the mashed dates into small balls and keep the pistachio mixture ready.
- Wrap about 30 g of dough around each filling, press into a maamoul mould and tap out.
- Bake at 180 °C for 15–20 minutes until the bases are lightly golden, then cool completely.
How to make it lighter
- Make smaller pieces of about 20 g instead of 40 g to halve the calories per cookie.
- Both fillings are rich: date filling is mostly sugar, pistachio filling adds more fat, so count either as a treat.
- Plan them as one treat with tea rather than a plate to snack from.
History
Maamoul are baked across the Levant, Egypt and the Gulf for Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, and Christian families make them for Easter. Different shapes traditionally mark different fillings, so dates and pistachios can be told apart at a glance.
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Values are estimates per 100 g for a typical recipe; home and restaurant versions vary. Diets and allergens are worked out from the ingredients of a typical recipe — always check with whoever cooked the dish. Not medical advice. Nutrition data: Me Nutrition dish database v13. How we count →